2. Following my heart: The comfort zone

— Are you Yoel? From Peru?— a tall guy with a Grey jumper approached to me with a funny smile.
— Yes, my name is …. — and without having time to introduce myself this guy hug me like if I were his brother who haven’t seen from long time ago, this funny guy name is Nenad.
I was expecting something completely different, I was told I will live in a really cold environment, with people who barely smile, because now I was heading to the Balkans; but instead I found the opposite side of the coin, they are very warm, hospitable people, somehow I felt still in Latin-America when it was the first time I meet them.
— How are you? How was the trip? What happened with you? … we thought you will not come … — Nenad kept asking me more questions meanwhile he was driving me in his Yugo to the center of Skopje, but me I was just observing the view. I was wondering all the time what is happening in the minds of the people who goes to live in another country with different culture, what is the feeling, I for sure felt weird, nostalgic and happy, afraid and excited, heart broken and in love, everything at the same time, but over everything I felt stronger because one more time I decided to step outside of my safe world or like is known in psychology like the comfort zone.
The comfort zone refers to the set of environments and behaviors with which one individual is comfortable, without creating a sense of risk. In leadership matters is known that highly successful persons may routinely step outside their comfort zones, to accomplish what they wish. A comfort zone is a type of mental conditioning that causes a person to create and operate mental boundaries. Such boundaries create an unfounded sense of security. Like inertia, a person who has established a comfort zone in a particular axis of his or her life, will tend to stay within that zone without stepping outside of it. To step outside a person's comfort zone, they must experiment with new and different behaviors, and then experience the new and different responses that then occur within their environment.